By Lucy Hornby
CHENGDU, China (Reuters) - China will need to rebuild wholetowns and villages from scratch to rehouse the millionsdisplaced by last week's earthquake, a task which could takethree years, a top provincial official said on Friday.
Eleven days after the 7.9 magnitude quake shook themountainous province of Sichuan, hundreds of thousands ofsoldiers, relief workers and ordinary residents are now focusedon reconstruction.
Some towns in the earthquake zone in southwestern Chinawill need to be relocated altogether because the terrain is notsafe, officials have said.
The known death toll from the quake already exceeds 55,000,but more bodies are expected to be found as the debris from thedozens of flattened cities, towns and villages is cleared.
With the rainy season due within weeks, there is an urgencyto their work. The government's main concern is thataftershocks and heavy rain could cause secondary disasters suchas flashfloods and landslides.
"The rebuilding work faces a lot of difficulty in theregion, where the mountains have been shaken loose in theearthquake and there have been more than 7,000 aftershocks," LiChengyun, vice governor of Sichuan, told a news conference inBeijing.
Relief workers are also concerned that poor hygiene couldcause disease outbreaks. Li said this was a "peak period foroutbreaks of diseases", describing the situation as very grim.
But the government has also found what it termed 50"hazardous sources of radiation", deputy environment ministerWu Xiaoqing said, though insisted the situation was undercontrol.
"Three are buried in rubble and another 12 are in dangerousbuildings, which staff cannot go into," he told a newsconference. "At present, tests from the scene show that therehas yet to be an accidental release of radiation."
China has pleaded with the international community toprovide millions of tents for the homeless. It is also sendingtonnes of heavier building equipment and supplies into thearea.
"We will strive to provide safe, economical and convenienttemporary housing for 98 percent of the residents within thenext month," Li said.
"The priority work in the reconstruction is to find properlocations for rural residents to build houses. We will striveto make such village houses ready for them before wintercomes."
In Chengdu, some volunteer relief convoys reported beingheld up by hungry residents, one at gunpoint. There werereports of two people being beheaded by helicopter blades, oneat the Wolong panda reserve, sources in Sichuan and localreporters said.
"QUAKE LAKE" DANGER
Premier Wen Jiabao, making his second visit to the disasterzone, visited hospitals and tents sheltering quake refugees onFriday in Mianyang and Beichuan county, one of the worst-hitareas.
In a temporary shelter for the Beichuan Middle School,which lost up to 1,000 students and teachers in the quake, Wentried to cheer up children, writing a line on the blackboardreading "Deep distress resurrects a nation".
Wen, a trained geologist, had earlier ordered rescueworkers to eliminate the danger of dammed rivers, waterways andbulging newly formed lakes "through engineering means" whileswiftly evacuating people in their path.
The May 12 quake, the worst to hit China in a generation,changed the landscape of northern Sichuan forever.
In Hongguang, in the province's northeast, the quake causedboth sides of a valley to slide, burying three villages and 900people. The Qingzhu River is trapped behind.
"The mountains merged," said Gao Xiao, who barely escaped alandslide that roared past her house.
The Qingzhu landslides have formed five lakes, the biggestof which is almost 30 metres (100 feet) deep. A flood controlteam monitors the natural dams constantly, for fear they willburst and unleash a wall of water on the valley below.
The more than 30 "quake lakes" were safe for the moment andresidents under threat had been evacuating, Zhu Bing, a Sichuanwater resources official, told the news conference.
"There is a possibility of (the dam) collapsing entirely inthe case of a strong aftershock or rainstorm," Zhu said of theTangjiashan barrier lake in Beichuan which Wen toured onThursday.
Heavy rain is forecast, making life even more difficult forrescuers, relief workers and the 5.48 million either living intents or under makeshift cover as they mourn their dead.
(Additional reporting by Guo Shipeng and Ben Blanchard inBeijing; Writing by Nick Macfie and Jeremy Laurence)
